Marvin W. Heyboer sends us this lyrical reflection on the Nigerian jihad with this comment: he "was commissioned by Trinity Christian Reformed Church of Grandville, Michigan to investigate the subject of co-existence between non-Muslims and Islam (and other aspects of Islam). He offered to publish these words of his personal journal when he returned from Sudan in July and reviewed the media coverage of Nigeria. He was very disturbed to find that these incidents of slaughter had been dismissed as tribal and sectarian skirmishes. Only when the Christian villagers took up arms in defense did the New York Times quote a newswire, 'that 1,000 people have been killed since May in clashes between Christians and Muslims in central Plateau State June 10, 2004, p A8).' That publication made no comment on the previous village to village slaughters in February and March."
If a tree fell in the forest with no one to hear it fall, did it make a sound? That distant question of my college youth mysteriously revisited me as I returned from my fourth journey into the interior of Nigeria. Ever so tacitly an answer nagged at me. Then I heard myself saying aloud, “It makes not a sound.” The falling tree makes not a sound, when there is no ear to hear the fall. With a fresh scent of fear for more African bloodshed and an intense sadness for Nigeria, I share the silence of the falling Trees of Nigeria.The Trees of Nigeria are gorgeous ebony, a few kings’ ebony too. These are Trees of smiling faces, bright eyes, white teeth and proud shoulders. Their height is average. Their branches are embracing. Their leaves are gentle. These Trees love life, very simple life. They happily walk for water, dig the earth for yams and devotedly nurture their young.
The Trees of Nigeria are falling. Alas these kindliest, loveliest, simplest trees of the human forest are fast falling. So I ask them. “Why fall there friend Tree? Is it of sickness or disease?” Tree nervously reacts, “No, not me.” I ask again, for I wish to know. “Help me to understand, oh gentle Tree. Why fall, the cursed AIDS, maybe?” With sounds of sorrow, Tree answers me. “No, not AIDS, thank God, for medicines are few.” “But, my friend Tree, why is your pain to fall?” Then Tree in grief cries aghast, “It is the bloody axe.”
These falling Trees of Nigeria make no sound. In the early morning of February twenty-fourth, 2004, the bloody axe fell one hundred twenty-five splendid Trees in the village of Shendam. Now the Trees are gone, with only ash and trash of former homes, churches and shops to witness of their fall. A survivor tells of the event with wet eyes dripping down his face of pain. He is a soft spoken gentleman of education, about sixty years, still in shock. His beloved Trees fell hard that day but made no sounds in the Forest of the World.
These falling Trees of Nigeria make no sound. In the region of Yelwa, eighty Trees humbly bowed in a stark and simple Roman Church saying their early morning prayers to bless the day. They too were felled, suddenly and brutally. The cruel axe severed their branches from their trunks. Lying in that beheaded form, matched kerosene sent their bleeding pieces smoking to the skies. But these falling Trees made no sounds in the Forest of the World.
These delicate falling Trees of Nigeria make no sound. Systematically felled in February and March of 2004, the simple villagers were unprepared and no real resistance made. For many years past they had grown into the safety of their kind, but then from afar the strange enemy’s holy axe suddenly did fall. From village to village in southern Plateau State hundreds were felled. Now the fallen Trees are gone, but the places they fell are still easily found for the curious reporters who dare. Begin in the villages of Bolgan and Karkashi and then simply follow the ashes. Begin even now. These falling Trees, though great in number, they made no sound in the Forest of the World.
These innocent falling Trees of Nigeria make no sound. At the break of dawn, on the edge of town, they see the holy aggressors’ axe. Stunned, they freeze in defenseless panic while another holy attack begins. Papa Trees fall and the madness comes: to run the field, to ride the bike, to hide the hedge, a collage of choices for frantic minds. Tragedy and bazaar blur each other. Fresh widow and orphan flee, no Papa Tree. The roof smokes, kerosene leaks down the walls, flames burn the beds and the yam for evening meal. Havoc, fear and flight all mix into each other. No help, no police, no fire truck, no phone, no 911, no social security, only Papa Tree and now no more Papa Tree. Displaced Mama Trees and little Trees are now victims newly primed to vision their only Security (God) as a conversion to the supreme, holy axe people. These falling Trees made no sound in the Forest of the World.What hope but to convert, for these broken souls?
• No hope: with the silence of the falling Trees, the way of non-resistance is clearly impossible. Even for King and Gandhi, the instrument of non-violence is a powerless tool without the published sounds of inflicted brutality and bigotry.
• No hope: with the silence of the falling Trees, the idea of international intervention is absurd.
• No hope: when the silence of the falling Trees became so unbearably noisy within the country, the Nigerian Federal Army was ordered into southern Plateau State to protect the innocent villages. Survivors still tell of their arrival and division. One young man, shot twice and left for dead, told how the Muslim soldiers of the army unit joined the militia mob of the holy axe. How they, in official dress, passed door to door to ask each Tree its name. At the mention of a Christian name, the family was killed. More Trees fell that day than the day before. But, these falling Trees made no sound in the Forest of the World.
These tragedies took place before and during my visits (February, March, and April of 2004) to interview Nigerian Muslims and non-Muslims on the crucial subject of co-existence between non-Muslims and Islam. For the record I was able to obtain video of devastated villages, dead, wounded and fleeing victims. Clearly, the hopelessness of this Nigerian crisis extends far beyond the failure of its corrupt government to protect the innocents from their violent aggressors. It reaches into the corruption of Western media and indicts reporters as dishonest primary sources of information in Nigeria, and raises serious questions as to the truth of their information from elsewhere in Africa.
These holy attacks were not a singular act. They were week to week, village to village. Soldiers of the Federal Army turned on their own people. Not to report these atrocious behaviors is hideously harmful to the innocents and a deliberate deception of the people of the world. BBC had no ears. CNN had no ears. The New York Times had no ears. The Washington Post had no ears. NBC had no ears. The falling Trees of Nigeria made no sound in the Forest of the World.
Ummm... the poetic metaphors are really unnecessary. Let the facts of the Nigerian jihad stand for themselves.
Alas, Nigeria! It appears that you are slated to go the way of Persia.
This has been discussed at Israpundit.com recently.... the travails of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and even (Israel-basher-come-lately) Nelson Mandela worked because even though they faced enormous prosecution, the oppressors were civilized, basically decent, and moved to compassion by the non-violence of the beaten resistors. Even the hard-hearted Romans, with the daily bestiality and gladiatorial displays, burning and crucifying christians, were won over by the early christian martyrs.
If Gandhi, King, or Mandela had fought back against Muslim rulers, they would have been dead by sundown the first day.
If anyone in Nigeria is reading this, I can only suggest that you start building a fence, a big, tall, wide fence. Anyone that refuses to sign a pledge of allegiance to the constitution of Nigeria can move to the other side of the fence.
Bravo, well said kj! Point abt Gandhi King et al is well taken. One's opponent must be worthy of one's strategy.
Anyone wonder why the world isn't doing too much in darfur despite the numbers massacred there equals the PAlestinian toll thus far? Suppose it were nonmuslims (or heaven save, christians)attacking the darfurians, I can only imagine the indignation and sound-and-fury in the west as well as the mideast.
As for the fence thing, yeah its a gr8 idea alrite. No wonder the israeli fence makes eminent sense.
This is a terrifying tale and needs immediate Media Exposure. Peaceful villagers without weapons
make a wonderfully easy targets for murderous 'axesmen'. Where are those useless lot, U.N when they are needed??
Obasanjo is corrupt and subject to the blackmail and blandishmentsm of the Muslim-dominated army. He is, though nominally a Christian, akin to that Syrian puppet Emile Lahoud, who does the bidding of his Damascus masters and is despised by the Maronite leaders and clergy. Nor are these the only cases of "Christian" leaders who do the bidding of powerful Muslim interests. If the Muslim population continues to grow -- it need only go beyond a certain point, it need not be a majority -- "democractic" politicians will dance to the Muslim tune, and abandon the interests of the non-Muslim indigenes. This has happened often before. Adherents of Islam are all supposed to be missionaries, participants in the Da'wa or Call to Islam. Every move is calculated in relation to whether or not it furthers the long-term interests of Islam, and the ultimate goal. That includes, of course, at times hiding one's real beliefs, or like the Muslim leaders expressing an entirely phony solidarity with their "fellow countrymen" being held hostage in iraq (phony, but probably enough for those French who allowed themselves to believe that soccer goals made by Zizou are enough to guarantee a wonderful new France of Muslim and non-Muslim alike), done for transparent purposes to deflect criticism from Islam itself. HOw much more of this, how many more kidnappings of hostages, or theatre-goers in Moscow, how many more bombings on subways, on buses, on airplanes, on trains, how many more plots uncovered to bomb a Christmas market, a cathedral, schools, hospitals, how many more attacks on innocent Buddhist farmers and monks, or on Buddhist statuary, or on Hindu and Sikh peasants, or on Christian schools and hospitals and churches in Indonesia and Pakistan and the Philippines and Sudan and Nigeria, how much more does one need? What burden of proof needs to be met now? Why is there a refusal to take in all the evidence, and offer the only explanation that both explains all of that evidence, all of that accumulated data, and also has predictive value for the future? How much longer will the agents of Islam, now tenure-protected in universities, where they are fulltime apologists for Islam -- their litany of "colonialism" and "gender" and "identity" and "postcolonialism" being a farrago of nonsense (Hamid Dabashi comes swimmingly to mind), of half-baked concepts that they took out of books they did not understand, but which provide them with an intellectual grid with which to explain, without ever engaging with what is written, and received, in the canonical texts of Qur'an and "strong" hadith. ONe might dub such people as Dabashi Naipaul Man, for it was Naipaul who first described, so mordantly, the kind of Third-World fake intellectual who takes scraps of the Western Marxist and revolutionary lexicon, and then tries to ape the habitues of Western cafes and salons, in misaplying these categories to his own benighted world.